Wednesday, April 16, 2008

PAPAL BULL. During Benedict XVI's American tour, you may tire of watching the pontiff work his small range of expressions and resemblances (when he is enthused and engaged, Dracula; when he is not, Sam Jaffe in The Scarlet Empress). But conservative bloggers -- whether out of allegiance to Opus Dei or just out of collegial feelings for a fellow dogmatist -- are riveted. From The Corner at National Review comes this awestruck Michael Novak reportage from the Pope's D.C. lodgings:

...hanging on the wall, a life size portrait of [Benedict] by the great Russian émigré painter, Igor Babailov.

Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the Apostolic Nuncio, said in advance that the portrait catches the pope’s shyness, strength, and almost physical presence, in stirring colors of light gold against the dark.

An "almost physical presence"? Maybe it's actually a hologram that blinks on and off. Also:

Best of all, the figure of the risen Christ towers above Pope Benedict...

If Benedict is, as Novak says, "life size" in the picture, and Christ towers above him, the whole thing must be the size of a small billboard. Imagine being comfortable with a near-mural starring oneself in one's apartment -- especially one that, "in its style and presentation," Novak reports, "reaches back to the traditions of the great artists of the Renaissance." I imagine this would be a little much for Siegfried and Roy, let alone a simple man of God.

But this ostentation is just funny; some forms of Pope worship are creepier. At the Weekly Standard, Mark Shea compares the relationship between Benedict and Americans to that of St. Paul and the Corinthians -- and no, I didn't mean "American Catholics," because neither does Shea: he means the lot of us, whom he blasts as a "Paris Hilton kind of people" with "a culture that is desperately in need of the clarity, humility, beauty, and love of Christ that [Benedict] preaches with such marvelous grace."

So if you ain't a congregent, you best congregate anyway! And if you aren't so inclined, too bad, because the TV stations are all tuned to the former Inquisitor performing his Stations of the Crass: zipping around in his motorized vitrine, listening to ecclesiastical yammering (where the dazed Sam Jaffe look comes into play), and explaining to Americans (alongside their despised leader) that they aren't entitled to freedom, because it isn't a right at all -- just something God grants. If you're lucky. And he's in a good mood.

No doubt some of us will get lulled by the incessant coverage, and begin to think, well, the man talks about religion and we all know religion is a good thing, and he certainly wears nice dresses. Let me explain something:

Back when I was in the first grade of a Catholic school, the nuns used to slap us and make us kneel on metal rulers as punishment. Then came Vatican II, and corporal punishment ceased. Eventually we could eat meat on Fridays, and even take a swig of the sacramental wine. It was like the Prague Spring. We still had to do catechism drills and go to Mass every First Friday, but the small kindnesses inspired by John XXIII's Council gave us the notion, however faint, that we were not just souls to be processed for redemption, but also human beings. That may be why I was eventually able to escape.

The simultaneous pomp and boredom of the TV coverage tends to minimize it, but the Pope's message, to put it in the mildest possible terms, is not necessarily consonant with the traditional American idea of liberty. Of course no one will ask any hard questions about it of the Americans who support and choose to stand with Benedict -- the Catholic Church has way more juice than the Trinity United Church of Christ. But it's worth keeping in mind during all the ring-kissing.